A lot of people are falling for the illogical fallacy of atheism these days. Atheism asserts that there is no God who created us, and the universe just happened on its own somehow. Living things somehow morphed into being all on their own from inanimate matter. That notion has to be one of the dumbest things this engineer has ever heard of!
Timing and Order
Why is that, you say? Well, for starters, timing is all around us in the world in which we live – 24 hours in a day, 365.23 days in a year, the earth’s orbital rotation of approximately 1,042 mph at the equator, the earth orbiting the sun constantly at approximately 66,000 mph, etc. Just as my watch keeps time, so does the earth. There is nothing random about perfect timing, all day, every day. Perfect timing indicates a superior intelligence keeping this timing going. This is true for every human-designed electrical/mechanical machine on earth, so why wouldn’t it be true for the universe? Besides, nothing ever moves unless some outside force acts on it, whether it is a human push, gravity, or something else banging into it. So who started the earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun? God, maybe?
The Big Bang
But that’s not all. Just about everyone agrees that the universe was created in a big bang almost 14 billion years ago. Scientists like Albert Einstein and others had originally thought that the universe had ALWAYS been here, but a Catholic Priest from Belgium, who was also a scientist, Fr. George Lemaitre, came up with the Big Bang theory after observing stars moving away from each other. From that, he concluded that matter exploded all at once from an original starting point and is continually expanding outward from the original point. He actually had to convince Albert Einstein of this. As smart as Einstein was, he really thought that the universe was eternal, without a beginning. The problem with this theory, of course, is that it sounded too much like “Let there be light!” which was God’s command in Genesis to create the heavens and the earth. Since a lot of scientists of the early 20th century were atheists primarily and scientists secondarily, they didn’t care for that correlation! But after observing what the Catholic priest had discovered, even Einstein had to agree that the universe had a beginning.
Limiting Evolution
The other problem with a 14-billion-year-old universe, instead of an infinite one, was that it limited the amount of time that animals could “evolve” from other species. So now the theory of evolution had to be reevaluated. One aspect of evolution had been that species evolve or adapt to different climates and changing environments through selective breeding, where the necessary genes that would enable a species to survive in a changing environment would be handed down to the next generation. If an animal didn’t get those survivability genes, then that animal would die off, leaving only the ones with the correct genetic makeup to survive. Examples would be that only white foxes and white bears would exist in the arctic (to blend in with the snow), dinosaurs would somehow became birds after the extinction meteor hit the Yucatan Peninsula, and nocturnal predators, such as owls, developed night vision to see in the dark while hunting. Now, after the Big Bang theory, this process was no longer infinite, but finite. This modification caused a lot of problems for people who thought this way because unlimited time to adapt was one of the key tenets of evolution. A finite universe meant limited, not unlimited, evolution of species.
Interconnected Systems
The complexity of interconnected systems in the world is also evidence of a creator, rather than just a random banging together of atoms over time. Just like a modern-day car or truck is an interconnected system of fuel, electricity, steel, plastic, rubber, and mechanical systems that all operate smoothly to get us where we are going comfortably, just so, the human body is an interconnected system of flesh, blood, organs, hair, enzymes, and bones that operate smoothly together so that we exist as living, breathing men and women. Marvelously, no one thinks about having to breathe, to make their heart pump blood, or to get their stomach to digest food; those things all happen automatically. The human body is truly a magnificent design. When you consider the human intellect and reasoning, the human ability to love, the human ability to procreate, and the human ability to feel other emotions, humanity is too wonderful a design to have just happened by random chance. Most logical people, when looking at the incredible interconnectedness and complex design of the human body, credit God for making us in His image. Our coming into being did not result from a big bang that somehow created living beings from inanimate matter, through a chaotic system of random clashing of molecules, which somehow came together to create brain systems, digestive systems, blood systems, skeletal systems, etc. For the record, worldly big bangs such as 9/11, Mount St. Helens, the Yucatan asteroid, etc., never create life; rather, they destroy life.
Scientific Method as Proof
For the sake of argument, let’s for a moment assume that living matter was randomly created from inanimate matter in a huge explosion. Science-loving atheists should be able to use the scientific method to recreate this process in a laboratory environment, but they cannot. Instead, atheists like Richard Dawkins have gone on record saying that MAYBE aliens landed on earth and created mankind. Fine. But then, who created the aliens? Did aliens somewhere really come to earth? In other words, that theory sounds a lot like Richard Dawkins’ wishful thinking and personal opinion, NOT SCIENCE.
Food
If humans were somehow randomly created by an explosion, what about the food that nourishes and sustains their bodies? Did food that humans can safely eat and digest somehow magically come together through a miraculous detonation of matter? Did that detonation not only create living beings but then somehow mystically “know” to also create apples, cattle, wheat, etc., so that we can all eat and stay alive? That is one smart random explosion of inanimate matter, for sure!
Fine Tuning
A lot of scientists have noticed that the constants of science are very finely tuned; so fine, in fact that it seems almost impossible. For instance, if the number of protons to electrons were off by just 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, the world would cease to exist. Another example is the “cosmological constant,” which is the expansion rate of the universe. This expansion is a balancing act between the attractive force of gravity and the repulsive force of space. This constant must be very close to zero, and if it were to be off by 1 part in 10120 the universe would either fly apart (larger constant), or collapse (smaller constant). So the bottom line is that the atheist needs to ask himself why we are on a planet with just exactly the right amount of gravity/oxygen/sunlight, etc., to perfectly sustain human life.
Lightning and the Water Cycle
The water cycle begins with the evaporation of the water in the oceans, causing clouds to form over land. Clouds drop rain and snow on the land and replenish the rivers, which then flow into the ocean and start the whole cycle over again. This amazing process drops just the right amount of rain in each area to sustain the nearby plants and animals. For instance, desert areas may only get 5 of 10 inches of rain a year at the most, but that amount is all that the local cactus and bugs and snakes need to survive. Wetter areas may get 50 inches of rain a year, which is how much the deer and cattle and tall trees in the vicinity need to survive. Lightning during rainstorms puts nitrogen into the soil, which acts as fertilizer for the plants. Truly an amazing cycle.
DNA
The DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that makes us who we are is much more complicated than the intelligently designed software code running your computer right now. DNA is found in all cells of each living thing. DNA carries all of the instructions for any organism to build and repair itself. It determines our eye color, our height, our metabolism, etc. Since software code (first invented in 1936 by Alan Turing in his effort to decode the Nazi Enigma code) is created by an intelligent being, it only stands to reason that the infinitely more complicated DNA would also come from an intelligent being and not just happen all on its own.
First Things
So how did the first human come to be on earth? One theory says that lightning hit some amoebas (which came from where?) in a primordial soup. The amoebas then all got together somehow and eventually formed a man and a woman. Amazing theory, for sure, but most people today know that if someone is struck by lightning, it kills rather than creates new life. Lighting has been striking the water for centuries, and it sure doesn’t seem to create any new life forms today. The other theory says that God, who exists outside of time and space, created the first man and woman. As Richard Dawkins thinks, though, it’s all the aliens’ doing.
The Fossil Record
The fossil record DOES NOT SHOW that one species evolved into another over time. What it does show is that the Cambrian Explosion created new animal phyla all at once, around 540 million years ago. All of the skulls and bones of prehistoric creatures do not magically evolve into the skulls and bones of a human being over time. In short, the missing link is still very much missing.
Migratory Birds
Some birds and even bats migrate thousands of miles during the winter months so as to survive the cold. They go over large prairies and oceans with few landmarks to show the way. How do they do this, and how do they know when it’s time to start? For most people to do this, we would need a GPS, lots of food, lots of warm clothes, etc., but birds and bats just do this all on their own. Some people say that they know when it’s time by the position of the sun in the sky, and they use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate by. (Pretty smart for a birdbrain!) Who knows for sure, but any animal traveling thousands of miles to the exact same place each year is truly amazing. Again, is this just an accident of the big bang, or is it an intelligent design?
Summary
To me, if a car or a building had to have been designed and built by a superior intelligence (mankind), it only stands to reason and logic that the much more complex universe and human body had to also have been designed by a superior intelligence (God).
An atheist needs to believe that nothing produced everything; inanimate matter produced human and animal life by exploding; random colliding molecules produced timing, order, fine-tuning, and beauty in the universe; the chaos of the big bang produced human DNA and other understandable data, and lightning somehow creates life instead of killing life. Now THAT is faith!
For me, I choose God, who loves us and wants us to be happy with him forever in heaven.
30 thoughts on “The Illogical Fallacy of Atheism”
I love how the very first paragraph sets up a strawman.
So you are an engineer and not a scientist. That explains your rubbish article. You think life morphing into existence as you put it is a dumb idea yet you think a god morphed into existence. A god infinitely more intelligent, complex and impossible than animals. Evolution explains how life happened. Obviously you don’t know what that is and have never read a book about it. Stick to engineering. I didn’t waste any time reading any further than the firstr paragraph of this trash since your ignorance had already been revealed and I have better things to do than waste time on garbage written by the uninformed.
Thanks Wayne – Your 3rd grade insults make me so glad I am not you. May God bless you and yours…Oh, and please grow up…
Ray
Who says there was ever a beginning to the universe? Obviously there was something that caused the Big Bang BUT wonder for a second if that something was an event from a separate universe, and that universe may or may not have had a Big Bang of its own and the universe that caused that one had one and so on infinitely. If there was never a beginning, which is a lot more rational than some invisible man in the sky that exists without a material form and is all powerful, what use is there for a God if everything observable in the present can be explained via scientific determinism? God was created to explain things that couldn’t yet be explained by people who were not very intelligent and later abused by those in power declaring that they were closer to God than others, perpetuating it’s control over the masses by becoming organized. I’m sorry that your parents indoctrinated you as a child like so many of us and you are unable to outgrow it, it is not your fault.
Your idea is not logical. If infinite universes have infinite time for their light to reach us…why is the sky mostly black at night? A caveman might guess that the sky would be white instead, yet there you are, promoting the father of lies [AKA atheism]. Perhaps if you listen to God’s revelations, you would sound smarter than a caveman.
Actually “your momma,” I came to this all on my own. Explosions do not cause matter to come together over time, and they certainly don’t create life. THAT is logic…
Read up on the miraculous images of Guadalupe, the Holy Shroud and the hundreds of Eucharistic Miracles that have happened throughout the centuries that Science cannot explain. The Universe is mathematically precise. Someone created it. Watch the DVD Bethlehem Star by Frederick Larson. It will convert the most hardened of hearts. Someone designed our bodies and if that isn’t true every building you see just popped into being too.
Oh Ray. It wasn’t an ad hominem attack. It’s clear from your writing that you really don’t have any idea what Atheism is. I don’t know how to explain that without you feeling that I’m debating poorly. Atheism isn’t what you think it is. It has nothing to do with beliefs. It only has to do with one single thing. A disbelief in God/gods. That’s a fact, Ray. A fact that you appear to be having difficulty accepting. Your assertion that Atheism asserts anything is completely false.
I can’t respond to your arguments in the article because they have nothing to do with me or Atheism. You built a straw man, and then attacked it. In my experience, theists, usually Christians, do exactly this all the time. It would be like me making up things about Catholics/Christians that are factually untrue – In order to be a Catholic, you must believe that insert ridiculous argument here – and asking you to respond to it in a serious manner. What would be the point of that?
I don’t BELIEVE in a God or gods, Consequent of that statement, and that statement alone, I’m an atheist.
I’m also an agnostic, because like every other human on this planet, I don’t have, nor have ever seen, factual knowledge that a god exists. But, being as intellectually honest as I can be, I’m open to the idea that a God or gods might exist. Atheists, people who simply don’t believe in God/gods, come in all sorts of different flavors, sizes and shapes. We all may have completely different worldviews and believe completely different things, At the end of the day, there is only one, single, solitary, unique idea that makes us atheists – we do not believe in God. Whatever we may or may not actually believe is irrelevant to and outside the scope of Atheism. Simply put, outside of our collective disbelief in God, atheists don’t have the collective worldview that you think we do, You’re spreading information, A less charitable person may even suggest that you’re spreading lies. Either way, it doesn’t seem very Christian-like to me.
Good enough – There seems to be 2 kinds of atheists – Good people like you, who can’t see God’s fingerprints on an intricately designed universe, and another kind who hate God for whatever reason and then try to go after Christians/believers (I’m talking Stalinists/Communists here). But as I said in the article, if my intricately designed modern car had a designer, then I just can’t fathom how such an intricately designed universe/animal kingdom/earth could just “happen” all on it’s own from an explosion 14 million years ago. It’s like a big screen TV just appearing in my living room and then thinking that I just don’t know if it had a designer/creator. But, to each his own. Good luck!
I would suggest that the intellecutal foundations of the church are, ironically, much the same as those of atheism. That is to say that in spite of its claims, the church remains a theological, not revealed construct. And studying theology always includes a study of philosophical logic. And atheists use much of the same ‘logic’ to underpin theological assumptions. They’ve just come to a different conclusion. My bets are that both are fundamentally flawed or as scripture notes: all is chasing after wind!
For all the posts about humility here, it’s odd that few writers feel humble enough to learn where their opponents are coming from. There is no attempt here to acquaint oneself with how actual atheists think and why they think that way. This is why the arguments are so ineffective.
So if you can’t refute my precise arguments, I understand the ad hominem attack. But, it’s really a poor debating tactic…
The article sounds effective to me.
Ray, I sound more like an agnostic than an atheist to you because you don’t seem to know the difference. We’re all agnostic, you too, if we’re being intellectually honest. Nobody knows. I explained what Atheism is. But, of course your free to believe what you want. I just wish you’d stop spreading misinformation. WWJD? Peace.
Another article about atheists written by someone who knows absolutely nothing about Atheism.
Q. Do you believe in God or gods? A. No.
That is the totality of Atheism. It asserts NOTHING!
I’m an Atheist. Ask me how the world began – my answer is I don’t know. I don’t have to believe in anything particular to be an Atheist. I just have to not believe in God. That’s what makes me an atheist . Nothing else. All of these articles written by theists, virtually always Christians, do nothing but spread misinformation about what Atheism is – and misinformation leads to all things negative. There are a lot of Atheists who absolutely believe that God doesn’t exist – they’re 100% sure of it. I disagree with them, because I don’t know if a god exists. Yet we’re both atheists. The only thing that I may have in common with another atheist is our disbelief in any god. Our worldviews may be completely different.
Here are two of my beliefs: I believe in love and science. Science has done more for humankind than religion has, imo. If you ask me to guess which is the more likely start to the universe, Big Bang vs God – Science vs Religion, I would select science because of its’ track record.
This article is ridiculous.
Congratulations Ray. Tom says that you know absolutely nothing about nothing. That’s impressive.
Bully for you. I learned from another atheist long ago that “ you either believe or don’t believe.” The only caveat missing is an analogy that goes like this. We can’t see solar energy (insert God) so for those who don’t believe in solar energy (insert God) there is nothing to tap into. For those GIFTED with faith (insert solar energy) who know how to tap into and use it (insert power) you must at least agree that if it didn’t work for anyone the whole notion of God would have dried up a long time ago. That it doesn’t work for you simply means you haven’t discovered it. And if you’re ok with that, bully for you.
You sound more like an agnostic than an atheist…
The article is spot on, and makes logical sense, unlike atheism, which believes that an explosion created living beings, timing, order, and beauty in the universe. One of my better articles…
So you can’t refute my precise arguments, and resort to a “science is god” tactic…In a debate, you really should refute given arguments, instead of just adoring science, which we already knew you did.
Well, science has almost blown up the world with it’s nuclear bombs, so there is a dark side to science. Catholicism invented the university system, free hospitals, orphanages, astronomy, etc., so we have done a lot of good for mankind.
“If humans were somehow randomly created by an explosion, what about the food that nourishes and sustains their bodies?”
OK so after reading that sentence, we can be sure one of the following is true:
1. You believe this is the position of atheists/scientists (it isn’t and I think that is extremely obvious); suggesting you are an idiot.
2. OR, you don’t believe what you said, suggesting you are a liar.
I’m curious which it is, but I guess at the end of the day it doesn’t matter.
Can you answer the question? If an explosion created humans and animals by random chance, did that same explosion create healthy food for us by random chance?
ad hominem attacks are the tool of people who cannot answer precise debating points, and in so doing, you prove that your way of thinking is totally false.
Hey Ray! Excellent article! The atheists have nothing but conjecture, but we have solid evidence for God’s existence. I’m working on an article for CS, and since your article touches upon one of my premises against atheism, namely, creation’s random becoming and assembling, would you kindly give me your thoughts on the following (if you have time)?
Without God, matter (generally, the substance/s of which material objects are composed) exists and moves without direction and purpose because nothing exists to give it direction and purpose. Due to this matter’s aimless nature (aimlessness in its existing and moving), it cannot give direction or purpose to that which it happens to create. Thus, whatever this directionless and purposeless matter arbitrarily creates must, without exception, be absent direction and purpose regardless of what the created being seems to perceive about itself or its actions. Afterall, the created being is simply a clump of matter.
Even the direction and purpose this created being seems to give itself is merely the product of matter moving aimlessly in its so-called mind, arbitrarily ascribing “purpose” to its behavior. It has no intrinsic direction and purpose, and can never have it. Accordingly, every thought this creation thinks and word it speaks are aimless. In other words, without God, humans are simply the consequence of aimless matter arbitrarily moving and combining to form random organisms who form random thoughts and speak random words. I should pause here and demonstrate my point.
Today, my brain told me the weather was rainy and cold. Consequently, it advised me to seek shelter and warmth, and I did. In a world in which matter has God-given direction and purpose, my brain worked as designed and I reponded to the reality of rain and cold. However, in a world in which matter is aimless (lacking direction and purpose), I cannot know if the rain and cold exist or if they are merely thoughts arbitrarily emerging in what I believe to be my brain. Even if other humans around me notice and discuss this same inclimate weather, I cannot know if these humans and their observations are real or simply the result of random neural activity. Hence, certainty is lost.
Therefore, we must conclude that the atheist’s directionless and purposeless assertion that God does not exist is utter nonsense, the ramblings of an aimless creature. Thus, the only way for the atheist’s assertion to have any merit, albeit a merely dialectic one, is if God exists. In other words, the atheist needs God to exist for his argument against God’s existence to have even a merely dialectic relevance. So, atheists promote their worldview as if they have purpose in doing so. But their worldview must be dismissed as arbitrary and, therefore, completely devoid of purpose.
Although this argument does not directly prove God’s existence, it certainly proves the insanity of atheism. And if atheism is insane, then theism, being the only other alternative, is sane.
Here, however, we run into a problem, namely, that two types of theism exist, polytheism (two or more gods) and monotheism (the one God). Polytheism is not viable because if two or more gods exist, they necessarily impose restrictions and allowances on each other and are, therefore, finite beings subject to change, time, and each other’s whims. Thus, they would be finite (lacking omnipotence) and temporal (lacking eternal perfection) beings by nature, needing a cause outside of themselves to bring them into existence. They would not be gods at all. Rather, they would be material or spiritual beings lacking purpose and direction because, according to the atheist, God does not exist. The series of causes could not go on forever. Therefore, one eternal, infinite, changeless God must exist. And monotheism wins again.
Accordingly, since the one, immutable God exists and is existence, we must conclude that everything He creates, down to the smallest of particles, has direction and purpose because nothing that comes into existence does so without His express or permissive will.
Additionally, some atheists may agree that direction and purpose do not really exist but exist in the mind as figments rather than truths. Yet, these people function as if these things are real and, therefore, behave in a way that contradicts their poorly formed philosophy. Also, their denial that things, including truth, exist is also a denial that their truth exists. And they end up denying their own conclusions. See denialsim, material atomism, and casualism for more information about these types of atheism.
Thanks Ray!
So then, if God created the universe — who created God?
If you say God “always was”, then the atheist will counter that the universe “always was”; that before the Big Bang was a Big Crunch. Etc etc Neither side has any proof.
No one created God. He is outside of our time and space. Mind boggling for sure, but it’s the only answer. God always was, and always will be. The good news is that we can b one with Him now after receiving Holy Communion, and one with Him after death, in heaven, if we love him now, serve him now, and avoid sin.
Pax Christi
Your response, though honorable, is relevant as to human psychology but not as to objective truth.
Perhaps:
“The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. This is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it and speak of the depth of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even the word itself. For if you know that God means depth then you know much about him. You cannot then call yourselves atheists or unbelievers. For you cannot think and say: ‘There is no depth in life! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface.’ Only if you could say this in complete seriousness you would be atheists—otherwise not.”
God created himself. Just Happened
Not sure why he chose to turn women into salt though. Or let lot do that thing with his daughters. But if there’s one religion has shown it’s that it makes no sense it’s horrible and they can’t explain any of it.
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